Yesterday was back to Monday’s 4 silver park to start closing it out, adding onto the grid, and got 4 wheaties early, then nada for 3 hours.  WTF?  More all or nothing — its usually not like this.  It felt the E-Trac just wouldn’t hit deep.  I had crap auto rec, and was getting crap channels (4 and 7), so there may have been something technical with the dirt, who knows?  Its rare that I go an extended period of time without hitting anything deep.  I wonder why?  Battery was low, but I figured it was all digital, but maybe not?  Maybe the big unit was too hot (they make ’em white to reflect heat, and while I am no engineer, it is possible that the engineer knows that heat may be an issue with this coil.  Thing is, I did very well with this coil last August, so I’m not sure heat is an issue).

Anyway, today was back to the same site to try to do some science, at least see if a fresh battery made a difference, and swap out the big unit for the pro coil if I got an iffy signal.  But, the hardware to make swapping coils easy didn’t arrive (I had the package, but not all the parts were in it), so I decided to hit some loose ends of the site instead with a view to closing it out this week.

One loose end, an embankment with old trees didn’t pan out.  Too bad.  Many times, embankments work out, including at this site, where many of the silvers have come from a different one.

Since the other embankment was so good in the past, I decided to hit 2 ranks of flat area just above it (despite the fact that the flat area in general had no good tells on previous prospecting), and that turned out to be a good idea.  I hit 4 wheaties, including a very deep one (so my confidence in the machine and the big unit was restored, tho this area is far from the other area, and I was able to use channel 2), and then hit a merc at just 3 inches.  Are you kidding me?  This park is hard, and gives up its silver very grudgingly.  It was a 12-45, you often don’t dig ’em when they are shallow, but fortunately it had “that sound”, but I was still shocked.  Not to far on got the ’37 Q, crap signal, and not too deep, but I think it was on its side, cause I got it with the digger, and it ended up in the tailings.  Rounded it out with a rosie that was somewhat masked by a modern penny, but you could still hear it.  Love the E-Trac.

Such a huge park, but so few areas produce.  Fill and grade isn’t an issue, so its sort of a smaller scale all or nothing.  I guess I should just stop trying to figure stuff out.  Still some loose ends to do, I will try to expand the main grid, and will probably go over the main embankment again as carefully as possible, then its Farewell Farewell to another site.  But, at least I don’t think that will be tomorrow.